Communication radios, such as the SPECTRA brand two-way land mobile radio (manufactured and sold by Motorola, Inc., 5555 Beach Street, Fort Worth, Tex.) are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and offer the user a wide variety of operating capabilities. These various capabilities are typically controlled within the radio through manipulation and/or provision of various radio operating parameters. A non-exclusive list of such parameters would include transmit frequency, receive frequency, a system identification (ID), a subfleet ID (and other forms of squelch control and/or communication resource allocation mechanisms), encryption coding or decoding information, data message information, and so forth. Further, some radios will support various operating modes, wherein each mode has associated therewith a plurality of predetermined radio operating parameters. For example, a first predetermined operating mode for a given radio might require the radio to operate on a specified transmit and receive frequency, and to operate with a specific system ID and subfleet ID. A different operating mode for the same radio may provide for completely different values for the same operating parameters.
To simplify operation of the radio, such operating modes are preprogrammable, such that a full set of predetermined operating parameters can be selected by simply selecting a particular operating mode. To assist the user, a radio having a display will usually provide a mode name alias on the display to indicate to the user the particular mode then currently selected. Often, the alias will simply read, "mode 1," "mode 2, " and so forth.
In a large communication system, such as a bus fleet in a large metropolitan area, it is not unlikely that different radio equipped vehicles will be used by different operators from time to time. Therefore, it is not appropriate that the mode name aliases programmed into the radio should be too personalized to a particular user, as this would inhibit ease of use of the radio by a new operator unfamiliar with the definition of the private alias. By the same token, the generic alias otherwise provided by the radio (mode 1, mode 2, etc.) will also typically be unsuitable, since mode 1 for one radio will typically not coincide with mode 1 for a different radio, even within the same fleet.
In such a situation, it is desirable to provide a common system wide mode name alias for a given operating mode that will be readily recognized and understood by most or all operators within the system. To date, however, to provide such system wide mode names has required either full reprogramming of the radios, which is both time consuming and raises the potential for error, or that the currently programmed operating modes within a radio must be accessed by a human programmer and compared against various lists of system wide mode name aliases. Presuming that this activity is done correctly, the proper mode name alias must then be entered into the radio by the human operator. Again, the process is extremely time consuming, tedious, and subject to error in execution.
Accordingly, a need exists for an efficient, non-time consuming, relatively error free method and apparatus for providing an operating mode alias to a radio.